Le Triomphe de Voltaire

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

The French philosopher, playwright, and satirist Voltaire frequently deployed allegories touching on antiquity in his writings In this epic print, Melpomene, Muse of tragedy, leads Voltaire to Apollo to receive the crown of immortality, while his detractors face the fiery pit of hell and Thalia, Muse of comedy, doubles over in laughter. In the background a sculpted bust of Voltaire is wreathed, a ceremony enacted on Paris stages after the writer’s 1778 death. The print was likely made around 1791 to celebrate Voltaire’s re-burial inside the Paris Panthéon, a repurposed church designed after the ancient Roman Pantheon (here described as the Temple of Memory). Voltaire himself owned the original painting of this subject by the same amateur artist who created this print.

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